"Never Imitate"

"Insist on yourself; never imitate" ( Emerson, 21)
Ralph Waldo Emerson Writes in his essay, Self-Reliance, of his idea that people should not follow each other. He believes that we should "never imitate" each other. I, personally, have a hard time agreeing with him, here. We all must "imitate" at certain points in our lives, like when we are young children learning how to talk, walk, and eat without the help of another person. To do so, we have to imitate each other. A toddler learns to talk by listening to other people communicating verbally. We are taught to set examples for those who are of a younger age and who are less experienced than ourselves. Our society thrives off of imitation and for any single person to derive from the normal ways of our society would, without a doubt, put them on the outside, casting them as an non-conformist.

I am baffled as to why Self-Reliance is looked at as an amazing, inspiring peice of literature when we are living our lives and teaching each other to live their lives in a completely different way than Emerson believes that we should. I will take the pragmatic approach, here, and say that I do not think that there is any possible way that we could change our society or become non-conformists without struggling for the rest of our lives.

I also must point upon the fact that Ralph Waldo Emerson is promoting nonconformity and not imitating other people while, in the picture above, he is dressed in the typical costume of a male of his day and age. Maybe this is becasue Emerson is aware that he will be considered an outsider if he were to dress in a non-conformist way. I believe that he wrote this essay in the hope that someone in the future would have the courage and the ability to create a new society, in we do not win the game of life by playing follow-the-leader.

Advancement or Encumbrance?

When thinking about advancements that we are living with that our parents might not have had the privilege and enjoyment of (if you consider it to be that), technologically, I have no problem coming up with examples. But when it comes to the non-technological advancements, difficulty arrises. I was wondering why this is, for I know that our society has advanced greatly in the last 20 or 30 years in many ways that do not involve technology, but becuase we have gotten to the point where our lives rely so heavily upon our electronic devices, it is a challenge to point upon anything else that has aided the forward movement of our society. Americans especially, are so focused on the cell phones, ipods, computers, internet, etc. But is this so wrong? Should we be allowing ourselves to grow attached to our compact electronics? Is it wrong that I feel like I am without a part of me when I do not have my cellular phone in hand? Or is this just the way of the future? We are living with so many things that people did not have 30 years ago. But whether they advance our society or just create a need for electronics I cannot say. I do know, though, that I cannot imagine my life without these things and for some reason, this idea scares me.

Inappriopriate Impositions

Politics have been a main focus in our nation in the last couple of years as we were preparing for the most recent election. So what better time for teachers to get their students educated on the matter than right now? Going over both the promises and arguments of each political parties' candidates and the changes that they could each potentially bring is essential to the learning process. But what is most unnacceptaple is the imposition of the teacher's personal opinions being put on the students. As most students are not yet educated enough on politics to form their own concrete views, it seems rediculous that a teacher, someone that students look up to, would express their favor for one political party over the other. (Luckily, my American Studies teachers are so amazing and would never do anything of the sort!) The line has most certainly been crossed when a teacher goes as far as to ridicule a student for their opinions that are opposite of those of the teachers. It is one thing when politics is being discussed in an english or history class but when it is being discussed in a second language class and not even in the language that is being learned , then there is a stretch. Becuase as students, we are like sponges, it is in our best interest to not be surrounded with the opinons of older, wiser and more educated adults who find it necessary to push their strong views on us. It is the job of the teachers to teach students how to form opinons not to be forced into taking-on other opinons.

"We can't take care of our own people"

"We can't take care of our own people" says a healthcare needer who waits along with the hundreds of other people, outside of a free healthcare clinic, hoping to be admitted. Many people travel hundreds of miles each day to get their only yearly treatment, but many of them are turned away without any treatment at all. Our nation is suffering because of our economic crisis and though not all of us are exposed to the direct effects, they are still taking place and many people are being denied the medical treatment that our country supposedly gives everyone. The U.S.A. is known as one of the wealthiest countries in the world and, yet, millions of people cannot maintain a proper health due to lack of money and medicare.
At seventeen, I am not yet old enough to vote but if I were, the struggles of this economic crisis would majorly effect my vote. In most cases I do not believe in raising taxes in order to help support people who need money. I think that the only way for our society to survive is if we have a minority, as bad as this may sound. In my opinion, financial equality is impossible with the way our world is set up. After reading this news article (link below) and watching this short film (link below), I have come to realize that it is not about keeping things the way they are, but it is important that we keep our country's pride. We need to help these people who are in need of medicine and treatment and in that we can give our counrty hope for the future. We need to dig ourselves out of the hole that our falling economy has put us in and we need to do it for the people who are suffering the most.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/uninsured-americans-turning-to-mobile-clinics/
Here is an interesting short movie/news report that I found:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1459208140/bclid1454906906/bctid1845377695